This Is Why We Celebrate Women’s Day
Today is International Women’s Day and it often serves as a point of discussion with some contemplating why there is a day to honour the women of the world.
Arguments ranging from, “they have rights now” to “this tokenises us” to “Why isn’t there a day for men?” are often thrown around this time of year and these are generally rebutted by a presentation of all the shortcomings still stopping gender equality in developed and developing countries.
But besides the clear current reasons – like non-universal access to abortion; female genital mutilation; high domestic violence, rape, and sexual harassment rates disproportionately victimising women; a gender pay gap; forced marriages; education bans; and so much more – there’s actually a historical event that marked 8th March as International Women’s Day (IWD).
IWD was officially recognised by the United Nations in 1977 amid labour movements spreading across North America and Europe which began at the turn of the 20th century.
One defining movement was the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York where women protested against working conditions.
On 8th March of that year, 15,000 women garment workers including many immigrants, marched through the city’s Lower East Side to rally at Union Square to demand economic and political rights. They honoured a similar march by their ancestors on that same day in 1857.
This 1908 demonstration then inspired the “Uprising of the 20,000,” a three-month strike from 1909 to 1910 against sweatshops.
Meanwhile, women in the European socialist movement were watching these US developments closely and German socialist Clara Zetkin proposed the designation of an IWD at an International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen in 1910.
Women delegates from 17 countries unanimously agreed.
The following year, support for this day was solidified when one million people poured into European streets on the first IWD to demand their rights. In 1913 and 1914, European women rallied against the burgeoning imperialist war and in sisterly solidarity on that day.
On IWD in 1917, female textile workers in Russia initiated a strike calling for “peace, land, and bread.” This action ignited the movement to overthrow the tsar, subsequently resulting in the workers’ revolution. The Soviet Union was the first to formally acknowledge IWD in 1921, becoming the inaugural government to establish laws that formalised the rights of women.
Since then, IWD has been commemorated and officially instated in countries all around the world. The day has been marked by revolutionaries, progressive forces, and women workers with their relentless fights against oppression and for human rights which continue to this day.
And in case you’re afraid of ‘living in the past’, remember there are millions of women in Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria, Chad, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, South Sudan, and Sudan, still facing gross violations of their most basic rights on the daily.
International Women’s Day is for them, too.
Photo: Daily Express/Hulton Archive (Getty Images)
Will you be honouring the women in your life on this historic day?
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